But maybe I'm being too hard on them. Who knows? Maybe they can put up a roof better than anyone. Lord knows virtually anyone could do it better than I could. (I REALLY wanted to say "better than me" right there, but I'm nervous about doing that in a column where I'm bitching about grammar.)
I once taught my wife to drive. It was a disaster. She almost drove into the canal. But before I got her to finally stop, she did some serious damage to my car.
When I brought it into the body shop, the guys were highly amused I was a teacher. "Oh, he's a teacher. What does he know?"
And their assumption, a very good one, was that I knew nothing about how to fix cars. I have to admit they did very good work, and seemed to take it easy on me. But there's a dual-edged sword there--first, they need to treat me well. However, they only needed to do that because as a teacher, I must be supremely ignorant. After all, do they teach you to do body work in school? If they don't, what's the point of going there anyway?
So I wonder whether I'm too tough on those home improvement guys. It doesn't matter a whole lot because I improved the heck out of my home after Sandy. But stuff like that really makes me nuts. If I were in a position to hire someone and saw that on a resume, it would go straight into the trash.
But if the position were in a body shop or putting up siding, I might be losing the very best candidate there is just because of my stupid prejudices.
Would you hire those guys?
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